[SOLVED] find to get the number of directories modified within last week

ted_chou12 · 11-23-2011, 07:42 PM

Hi, I looked up and found "find" is a function that "looks for files" but I am not really sure about the syntax even after I looked up the manual, how do I use it to count the number of directories last modified within a week?
Also seperately, a list that was last accessed within a week?
Thanks,
Ted

neonsignal · 11-23-2011, 08:38 PM

Use '-type d' to find directories, '-mtime' to search for modification times, '-atime' to search for access times, and use '-n' to specify less than a set number of days.

For example, to find directories modified in the last 7 days:

Code:

find . -type d -mtime -7

ted_chou12 · 11-23-2011, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neonsignal

Use '-type d' to find directories, '-mtime' to search for modification times, '-atime' to search for access times, and use '-n' to specify less than a set number of days.

For example, to find directories modified in the last 7 days:

Code:

find . -type d -mtype -7

Hi, thanks!, did u mean

Code:

find . -type d -mtime -7

Thanks,
Ted

ted_chou12 · 11-23-2011, 09:54 PM

Sorry, for asking a bit more, how would I match the folders in the root directory only?
eg.
/sda1/ok/aaa
/sda1/dd/aaw
/sda1/bb/ffe
/sda1/ad/efe

I only want the top level, /sda1, so the universal set of folder that it will draw from is only ok, dd, bb, ad. it would not consider subdirectories.

Code:

find "/sda1/ -type d -mtime -7 -name "/sda1/*/"

Is this correct? or wrong? It took a long time to make each search, I wonder if it could be quicker as well.
Thanks,
Ted

neonsignal · 11-23-2011, 10:15 PM

Use '-maxdepth 1' if you want to restrict the recursion to one subdirectory level, rather than trying to do name matching (the path is not included in the name match anyway).

Nominal Animal · 11-23-2011, 11:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ted_chou12

Code:

find "/sda1/ -type d -mtime -7 -name "/sda1/*/"

The correct form (including the depth limiting options, which much precede other options) is

Code:

find /sda1 -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime -7

The depth of command line arguments is zero. The -mindepth 1 option means the /sda1 directory itself is never counted, even if it has been modified during the last week.

If you only need the number of matches (using Bash or a POSIX shell), use

Code:

changed=$(find /sda1 -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime -7 -printf . | wc -c)

If you need the results in an array in a Bash script, use

Code:

changed=()
while read -rd "" file ; do
    changed=("${changed[@]}" "$file")
done < <( find /sda1 -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime -7 -print0 )

and the full path to each changed directory (as separate parameters) is "${changed[@]}", the first changed directory is "${changed[0]}" and the number of changed directories is ${#changed[@]} . This while read -construct is one of the very rare ones that can support all possible file and directory names in Linux, including those that contain newlines and other exotic characters.

If you want to additionally limit the search to specific name patterns, use -name 'pattern' where pattern is a glob pattern (your normal filename patterns, like *.png) that matches only the directory name, not the path. In your case, you could use

Code:

find /sda1 -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime -7 -name '[a-z][a-z]'

to find the immediate subdirectories of /sda1 changed in the last week and named using two lowercase letters.

ted_chou12 · 11-24-2011, 12:44 AM

Thanks,
Ted